Jake Smith is midway through an explanation of the disordered eating habits that led to his RED-S diagnosis when he suddenly diverts to talking about the abuse he suffered from one of his closest childhood friends. “It was bullying,” the up and coming star of British running says. “If something bad happened to him, he’d come over to me and hit me and that would put me into a shell.”
It is not easy listening to the 25-year-old describe how during games of football growing up he would offer to retrieve balls that went out of play “so as not to make anyone angry with me” but he uses it as a way to outline the origins of a routine that would see him skip breakfast, have two slices of toast with jam for lunch and then power on through his day until eating an insufficiently-sized dinner.
The friend “had some problems” but it affected Smith to the point where his “mental health went down and down” and “from the point I was 13 or 14, from that bullying, I went into a spiral and it affected every little thing.”
